The Roads Not Taken
by whitchry9
Summary: There is not just one universe, there are many. This one just happens to be The Universe, the one where John and Sherlock meet under the right circumstances, and everything that was meant to be is. But not all of them are so lucky. In some lives, they never meet. Title inspired by the Fringe episode of the same name. Five parts. Has now been translated into Spanish.
1. Chapter 1

Every decision leads to a new universe. Every time you turn left instead of right, get coffee instead of tea, you make an entirely new universe, all of which branch out from you like roots on a plant, always stretching for _more. _

And in every universe, there is a version of you.

Or at least it started out that way. Because all those different decisions, those tiny little choices that differ from others, could mean the difference between life and death.

So in some universes, you are not alive, having stopped that extra minute to smell the flowers, only to be run down by a bus that didn't see you. In other universes you are almost the same, except for perhaps a different colour hair, or a different favourite food. But no two universes are exactly the same, no two versions of you identical. Because the smallest decisions, they can make the most massive difference.

* * *

In this universe, Sherlock Holmes did not become a consulting detective, but a criminal.

And as far as criminals go, he is a damn good one. He enjoys the game as much as he does the crime, leaving trails of breadcrumbs that the Yard more often crumbles under their feet than they do follow them. Sherlock does not kill anyone in his time as a criminal, preferring to pull clever heists and blackmailing gigs than to get his hands dirty with something as lowly as murder. He could, if he wanted to, of course, but it never comes to that, and he retires early, moving out to Sussex to keep bees.

In that universe John Watson gets shot in Afghanistan and returns home to London, meeting Mike Stamford that day, but after sharing that he can't afford London on an army pension, Mike has nothing to offer, and John is forced to move in with Harry. He hears of Sherlock's doings, something about a painting, and another time with a large scandal involving someone high up in the British government, but never knows of the man behind them, the man who he is best friends with in another universe, a man who saved him. John keeps his cane until he dies in that universe.

* * *

In a different universe, Sherlock drowns instead of Carl Powers. Moriarty finds no pleasure in his first murder, and does not go on to become a master criminal with his services for hire. He works in IT at a local hospital, and meets a girl there who is shy and lovely. He moves in with her and her cat; she introduces him to Glee. John does not go on to study medicine in that one, but instead becomes a teacher. He is endlessly patient with his students, and he is well loved by them. He marries one of his fellow colleagues, and they grow old together. John dies in his eighties, never having know what he missed. But if he was ever asked, would be appalled at the sort of life that was spoken of.

* * *

In one universe, Sherlock is never born. John never knows about the missing part of him, but goes through his life feeling empty, no matter how many lives he saves, no matter how many bullet wounds he sutures or how many hearts he wills to continue beating.

He can't force his own to, and dies at the age of 56.


	2. Chapter 2

One universe pushes John and Sherlock together much earlier, both of their mothers living in the same shelter for women who were victims of domestic abuse. John was a few years older than Sherlock, but they quickly became inseparable, Sherlock's intelligence more than making up the years between them. They pretended to be pirates together.

One day Sherlock and his family are gone, having moved to America for a fresh start. John will never see the boy with the funny name again. His mother eventually gets on her feet, and they and Harry move to a small flat. John becomes a social worker to help children like him, and marries one of the women he meets. He adopts her daughter, Irene. They have a son together and name him Sherlock. John isn't sure why.

Sherlock works for the CIA in America, and his brother becomes a member of senate.

They lead content lives.

* * *

John watches Sherlock die far too many times. Rarely, Sherlock also joins the military, and he dies in Afghanistan, John's hands covered in his blood without knowing his name. More often, he is working in the A&E department when Sherlock is brought in, sometimes from an overdose, sometimes from a gunshot, and once from a poisoning. He was the last victim in a string of serial suicides, the man who was responsible for them dead as well. In the end, both pills were poison, perhaps the man knowing he was reaching his finale, and wanting to go out on a high note.

Once John was a paramedic who was called to the scene where Sherlock was leaning against a wall with a knife sticking out of his stomach. They scooped and ran, John packing gauze around the knife to stabilize it until it could be removed during surgery. They're screaming through the streets of London, Sherlock muttering under his breath which route would be the best to take at this time of day, but John only tells him to save his energy while squeezing fluids into him. He makes it to the hospital alive, but codes on the operating table, and they can't get him back.

Another time, John was the one who found Sherlock barely conscious from an overdose and was the one who had to perform CPR when his heart gave out and breathing ceased. He rode with him in the ambulance when it got there, but at A&E he was told they couldn't get a pulse, that he was gone. John wasn't even a doctor then, just a man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or conversely, the right place just minutes too late. John cried to his wife that night. He never even knew his name.

Other times still, John saves Sherlock from drowning, him falling off a bridge, or perhaps jumping. John is brave (stupid) enough to jump in after him, and pulls both of them, spluttering and shivering, to safety. Sometimes John is a lifeguard in his teens, Sherlock a younger boy whose older brother never taught him how to swim. He pulls the small boy out of the deep end, and in thanks he receives a detailed description of his failed romantic endeavours.

Sometimes, far more rarely than the reverse occurs, Sherlock is the one who saves John. Sometimes, John is in a car accident, and Sherlock is at the scene to call the ambulance. John is unconscious and never sees the stranger who saves his life. Another time John phones a suicide hotline, and Sherlock is the one who answers. Sherlock uses logic to talk him out of it, and John manages to crawl out of his depression. In others, Sherlock takes out the criminals who would end up hurting John in the future, yet another way the branches of the universes can be traced.

In The Universe, they both save each other, a perfect kind of harmony. But after all, it is _the one._

* * *

In a few universes, few being a relative term compared to the vastness that spawns from every single choice, Sherlock and John know each other only through friends and relatives. Sometimes Harry marries Anthea, or whatever her name is that time. Sometimes, John's children grow up alongside Mycroft's. Sometimes John's grandchildren marry Sherlock's grandchildren, drawn to each other and never really knowing why.

Sometimes John teaches from the textbook that bears Sherlock's name. Sometimes he marries a woman whose life was spared by Sherlock's actions. Sometimes their dogs have puppies together.

And sometimes, very rarely, their paths never cross at all, only bending away from each other like magnetic fields.

In those universes, the sun seems to not shine very often.


	3. Chapter 3

In yet another universe, John joins the police force. He works up the ranks until he becomes a DI, the position that Lestrade holds in the universe that has always been. There is an impossible man who shows up at crime scenes, telling them things no one should know. John steers clear of him until he stops showing up. Rumours run rampant, of course, ranging from him being murdered himself, to being locked up for committing all those murders he seemed to know so much about.

Actually, Sherlock is forced into rehab, yet again, by his elder brother. After he becomes clean, Mycroft ensures he doesn't step near a crime scene again. Sherlock works in museums around the world, authenticating art. Mycroft can't help but feel his victory is hollow.

John's team solves the case of the serial suicides right after the fifth victim. He never finds love.

* * *

A good portion of the time, John still ends up with a career in medicine, and Sherlock in crime. Sometimes John goes to Afghanistan, sometimes he goes to Iraq, and sometimes he stays in London. Sometimes John becomes a talented surgeon, other times he works in A&E departments, thriving on the fast paced life or death situations, and other times still he works in paediatrics with dying children and still manages to smile every single day.

Sometimes Sherlock is a consulting detective, other times he is on the police force. Sometimes he works for Mycroft, and sometimes he moves to America. Sometimes Sherlock is on the other side of the law, the criminal instead of the detective. In some universes, Sherlock spends a great deal of time in jail, not because he was stupid enough to get caught, but because he really has nothing better to do.

* * *

In other lives, John doesn't stay in London, doesn't even stay in Europe. In one universe, he moves to New Zealand, looking to find himself, finding instead a whole lot of sheep, and a woman who makes it all worthwhile. They have three children together, he working as a vet, she homeschooling the children. John never hears about the fake detective in London who throws himself off a building, after recording a message for the world to see on his phone, explaining tearily that he is a fraud.

Sherlock dies when he jumps off that building. He dies to protect Mycroft and his mother, who is still alive, but in a nursing home suffering from the end stages of Alzheimer's. One of John's grandchildren does a project on him in college, and comes to the conclusion that Sherlock Holmes was not a fake, just that he had no one around to believe in him.

* * *

In one particularly dark universe, one that none of the other universes want to acknowledge exists, Sherlock Holmes is a drug addict looking for his next fix when John Watson happens to be passing by. Sherlock stabs him in the abdomen while robbing him, because John wants to help rather than just give him money for drugs. He bleeds out in the ambulance, and Sherlock overdoses that night in an alley. His body isn't found for three days. John's blood is still on his hands.


	4. Chapter 4

In other universes, Sherlock and John only meet in passing, Sherlock running down a street at breakneck speed while John watches from the window of his favourite coffee shop, on his first date with the woman he is to marry. He smiles at the man rushing by with his coat swirling behind him, and returns to the woman across from him.

In another John only meets Sherlock after his death, working in the morgue with a young student named Molly when a corpse comes in. It is quickly claimed by a government official, and the body is taken away. John is unused to such dealings, but not much alarms him anymore.

Sometimes John holds something that Sherlock has touched, like a twenty pound note, and he can almost hear the whispers of what could be coming from it. The universe hushes itself, knowing that this is not the right one.

* * *

The further back the splitting occurs, the more different the universes are from the one universe, the one that always is meant to be. The universe where John breaks his leg at the age of eight when he runs into the street after a ball is vastly different from the one where he breaks his leg at the age of 31 in a car accident. In one of them Sherlock is a chemist being considered for a Nobel prize, and in the other he dropped out of university to pursue beekeeping.

* * *

Between all the universes, all the different lives that could have ever been, and that are, Sherlock and John have each had every job imaginable. Sherlock has been an actor, a concert violinist, an Olympic medal winning synchronized swimmer, a chef, a wine critic, and a father. John has been a father more often than Sherlock has, but has also been an author, a computer analyst, a librarian, a botanist, and even a priest.

But even with all those universes, all those possibilities spawning from the moment of their births, John is never a consulting detective, and Sherlock is never an army doctor. Sometimes Sherlock is in the army, or works in health care, but never in that specific role. Likewise, sometimes John works for the police, but never with that title. There's an unspoken sense that those roles are not for them to fill, that there is someone else out there that job is just waiting for, and to fill that hole without being the right person would be unspeakable.


	5. Chapter 5

Countless universes, million upon millions, more than could ever be imagined twist between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

The most complicated knots of thread one could possibly imagine, all work to lead to one thing, the universe in which they meet, become flatmates, and grow old together.

But all of the many universes' hard work almost becomes spoiled after Sherlock jumps off the roof of the hospital. Not because Sherlock dies, no the universes had already planned for that, and in this one, their baby, everything works out fine. (In others, not so much, lasting injuries plaguing the detective for the rest of his days, and in some he doesn't survive the fall at all. In others still he doesn't jump, calling Moriarty's bluff that isn't, and being forced to watch John get shot in front of him, arriving home to find Mrs Hudson dead, and Lestrade not answering his calls.)

But it's not Sherlock's actions that threatens the one perfect universe, the one universe that has been carefully planned and prepared for, no, it's _John's _actions.

Because it's not Sherlock's choices that split the branch, not like the universes had thought all along, but it's _John. _Ordinary, plain, average John, who makes decisions in split seconds and alters realities, spanning new universes with his cereal decisions and jumper shopping. The man who no one would suspect is the one who they all have to thank, or hate, because they are all his.

And when John comes to the point where that branch splits into two, it's not a choice between life and death like the universes had planned for it to be, with John obviously going down the path that continued, rather than the one that halted. It was not that path at all, because that was not an option. John Watson was only choosing between his gun and Sherlock's drugs. And neither option ended well.

John barrelled towards this decision without faltering, and the universes balked.

John Watson was not supposed to die, not in this universe, not in any. Not like this. (He does commit suicide in other universes, the one where he comes home from Afghanistan and can't afford London on an army pension, but doesn't move in with Harry, instead tells her he's moving away, but instead throws himself off a bridge. In some he shoots himself, and in others, he doesn't make it back, not because he's actively suicidal, but because he doesn't value his life nearly as much as he should.) But of all the threads, all the paths, all the branches that the life of John Watson was to take, this was never one of them.

That strange impossible man who looked like he hugged kittens for a living but could shoot a man dead through two sets of windows at a great distance. The unsuspecting man who was the one you really had to look out for, not the obviously dangerous man that was Sherlock Holmes.

Apparently, the universes had not been prepared for John Watson.

All of the universes, the millions upon millions, the impossibly enormous number of worlds that had been rooting for John and Sherlock from the beginning, all of them crowd around John, begging him not to do anything, begging him to _just, please, stop it. _

The force of all those millions and millions of lives John's had, both lived and not, weighs heavily on him. Before he can do anything, make that final choice, he grows dizzy and lies down. He falls asleep before he can go through with anything.

When he awakens, Sherlock has come back from the dead.

John punched him before collapsing back onto the bed, still a bit dizzy.

"You're not dead," he said stupidly, his head still spinning.

"No," Sherlock said kindly, and John had to give him that, for if there was one thing Sherlock hated (and there wasn't, there was dozens upon dozens) it was people stating the obvious.

"You... _bastard_."

Sherlock only bowed his head, almost as if in shame, and looked around the room.

He noted what John had left on the night stand.

"John..." he whispered. "What were you going to do?"

John looked to where Sherlock's gaze had rested. The gun. The hidden stash he had found, in his own room of all places.

He looked away from Sherlock. "Nothing. Of course. Nothing."

"You weren't going to?..." he breathed.

"Of course not," he lied.

Sherlock looked down at him and saw it in his eyes.

"Alright," he whispered.

In this universe, The Universe, Sherlock and John are one entity, Holmes&Watson, Sherlock&John, inseparable from that day forth.

When they grow old and weary of crime fighting and mystery solving, they move to Sussex where Sherlock raises bees and John watches him from the house, still blogging about his adventures with his mad consulting detective.

Everyone was where they belonged.

All was well.


End file.
